30 Years Ago... "Howard the Duck"!

It wasn't until I was able to surf the internet that I realized 1986's "Howard the Duck" movie was an awful movie.

That is of course, the general opinion. The movie itself is surrounded by, engulfed by legendary stories of how bad it performed. It made $37,962,774.00 on a $37 million dollar budget. The Howard the Duck suit itself is said to have cost $2 million. According to the 2009 DVD sleeve notes, the picture is “one of the most controversial high-budget films in Hollywood history.”

Me? I still love it as much as the day I saw it in the theater and as much as I did later when the movie would come to HBO and I would watch it four times in a row at my Aunt and Uncle's house. If someone were to tell me then that this was an awful movie, I would have had a hard time wrapping my head around that.​At a time when moviegoers have recently been conditioned to think of Superman as the blockbuster film superhero, the very first Marvel comic character to make it to the big screen was Howard the Duck. (Not counting a 1944 Captain America serial) ​

Executive Producer George Lucas still maintained that in 20 years Howard the Duck would be seen as a classic. Lucas,having just built the $50-million Skywalker Ranch complex, was counting on this film to get him back in the black and when it bombed, he was forced to start selling off his assets to stay afloat. One of those, was the animation wing of Lucasfilm, which he sold to Steve Jobs. That became what is now known as Pixar.

The movie maintains a cult following despite all of this including the creative team of the 2015 Howard the Duck comic series at Marvel, Chip Zdarsky and Joe Quinones’ Howard the Duck, which featured a cameo appearance from Howard’s 1986 co-star Lea Thompson.

In a truly meta-moment Thompson appeared as herself rather than her Howard the Duck character Beverly Switzler, as Howard’s latest client who is realizing that she has been randomly losing periods of time in her life with no recollection. The mystery does, eventually, tie back into Thompson’s role in the 1986 movie.

The official movie adaptation's #2.

Thompson, when asked about appearing in a comic connected to one of the biggest bombs of her career with the exact sort of ease you’d expect: “My career goes into a 100 different directions, and I embrace them all. They asked me to appear in the comic and I was like, ‘Sure, why not?’”

After all, it was Howard the Duck's creator himself, Steve Gerber, who said “life's most serious moments and most incredibly dumb moments are often distinguishable only by a momentary point of view.” Good movie, bad movie? This depends on your perspective. You couldn't have told me any different in 1986 and 30 years later, you still can't!

Did "Howard the Duck" deserve the reputation it got? Are you celebrating Howard's 30th? Let us know in the comments!